Art & Creativity Quote by Cornelia Funke

There is something bracingly unromantic about Cornelia Funke’s vow: not “as long as I’m inspired,” not “until the story is done,” but until the body quits. It frames writing less as a muse-kissed calling and more as a stubborn, daily practice - closer to craft and labor than to the myth of the fragile genius. The line’s punch comes from its plainness: “try” admits struggle and failure, while “drop dead” yanks the sentimentality out by naming the physical cost. Funke is dramatizing commitment without pretending it’s graceful.

The intent reads as both promise and self-command. For readers, it’s reassurance that the imaginative world they return to is sustained by discipline. For the author, it’s a prophylactic against the temptations that surround success: touring, branding, film options, the soft drift into “creative director” rather than creator. Funke’s fantasy work often hinges on books as living objects and reading as a kind of portal; this sentence flips that mythology inward. The portal isn’t magical. It’s maintained, page by page, by someone who refuses to stop.

The subtext also carries a quiet defiance about age and productivity. In a culture that treats women’s long careers as exceptions requiring constant justification, Funke makes endurance the whole point. Not legacy, not relevance - stamina. The line lands because it refuses the neat arc. It insists on the messy, ongoing middle: keep working, keep making, until the only ending left is the final one.